I am a Mum on a Mission to Transform Children’s Health, One Lunchbox at a Time.
As a parent, I am horrified by the statistics about children’s health: 25.3% of children between 5 and 17 are overweight or obese, and for the first time in recorded history, the current generation of kids have a shorter life expectancy than their parents. I am not prepared to let this happen – not on my watch!
Helping Parents
As a Health and Wellness coach, my work is to help parents give their children the best health into adulthood. I do this by teaching kids about healthy foods in a fun, interactive way that gets them to start the conversation with their parents. I then teach parents how to take advantage of this conversation, and get their kids involved in packing and eating healthy lunchbox foods.
Why Lunchboxes?
I’m targeting lunch boxes because it’s an easy place to start, but it can also have a profound impact on a child’s mood, behaviour, sleep, concentration levels, and academic achievement. It can even have flow-on effects to the family’s overall health and eating habits.
Mad Food Science™ Program Aims
My pilot for the Mad Food Science™ Program exploded into full roll out last month and I ran Mad Food Science™ classes for over 150 kids children, teachers and parents. The program has 3 main aims:
- Get kids to understand and take responsibility for the food they put in their mouth, and get them excited enough to start a conversation with their parents about good food
- Educate parents on how to continue that conversation with their kids about better food choices, and also get parents to take responsibility for giving their kids the right foods.
- Help parents make lasting change, by teaching them how to make healthy, fast, easy lunchboxes for their kids – that the kids want to eat.
Eliminating Power Struggles
As a mum, I know all too well the power struggles that exist between their kids and their parents. You tell them something and they resist it. Someone else tells them, and they are more likely to take it on. It’s the nature of the parenting relationship – not always, just sometimes but enough to make it frustrating. Food and what to eat unfortunately tends to fall into that sometimes realm.
I have devised a series of whacky experiments which I get Children to participate in as part of the Mad Food Science™ Class to help them get the messages of:
- how their body works, and how it’s different from their friends
- learn how the different colours of fruits and vegetables help different parts of their body
- understanding wholefoods and processed foods
- learning how to read the packets of processed foods
- exploring how healthy foods not in a packet can taste yummy
I am so excited to say that the feedback from parents whose children participated in the Mad Food Science™ is that their children have started the conversations at home about food and health. And most importantly, they are now having a much easier conversation with their children around it too. Success!
Praise
“The proof of how wonderful this workshop was for all children, was when I pinned up the rainbow foods chart in our kitchen and my daughter told me she had to eat something from each colour group and how in different ways it would benefit her body. She and her sisters then told me what we should include in our dinner that night to make sure we ‘ate a rainbow’.
I hope Bel gets to teach her Mad Food Science in every school, it is all about educating our future, one step at a time. She is our Jamie Oliver and I wish her all the best with her positive energy for changing one lunchbox at a time.”
– Imby (parent)
“Thank you Belinda for your informative and accessible talk tonight. You have done a great job in cutting through all the overwhelming information out there and helping to simplify the whole healthy food concept.”
– Amanda (parent)
“It’s been a fabulous experience for them, and has really helped some of our conversations about food … I’m about to take them shopping and am going to try to get them to choose a new fruit and vegetable each, and also to choose something that they would like me to cook for the week.”
– Kate (parent)
“We learnt what different colours of foods do for our body, how we are like a car and we need the right fuel to get the energy to run properly, how to read packets. We liked the taste tests the best and the experiment with the food colouring.”
– Students S1M
“We can help parents more when they do the shopping, told our parents about the different colours that help our body”
– Students S1B
“Very informative – child friendly – they really enjoyed the smoothie. Squashing of the food packets was especially enjoyed by the kids.”
– Stage 1 (year 1 & 2) Teacher
“I would recommend the session to others and found it very engaging for the students.”
– Stage 1 (year 1) Teacher
“Kids really enjoyed the session and talked about it later. A worthwhile incursion.”
– Stage 1 (year 2) Teacher
How can you help the mission to Transform Children’s Health?
Talk to other parents at the school and your friends about the program. Ask if they would be interested in having the program in their school. If so, the best way for this to happen is for you or them to have contact with the P&C or P&F about the program (I can provide you with an information pack), or for you to introduce you me to the appropriate contact at the school so that I can talk to them about it.
Email belinda@therootcause.com.au for an information pack or call me to chat 0401 649 289.